Meet Chip, teens' backseat driver

Susan Schauer never gave her teenage son the car keys without also handing him something he wasn't nearly as thrilled about--a small computer chip that kept an eye on his driving.

Plugged into his family's Mazda 626, the chip recorded his speed, miles traveled and any fast starts or stops. If Ben removed the chip, it recorded that too.

"It annoyed the heck out of him," said Schauer, a mother of three. "But it gave me peace of mind."

From real-time GPS tracking systems to onboard cameras, technology is increasingly offering parents tools to track and even control how their teenagers drive. Many of the options are borrowed from fleet managers who have used them for years to monitor truckers and other commercial drivers.

With car crashes the No. 1 killer of teens, taking 5,000 to 6,000 young lives each year, many parents want to learn the truth about how their children drive. Technology can offer them some answers.

"One thing that can change behavior is if you know Mom and Dad are going to find out," said Russ Rader, a spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Safety experts hope that one day automakers will use existing technology to make it impossible to start a car without wearing a seat belt or to exceed preset speed limits.

For Ben's parents in Easton, Md., the technology of choice was the CarChip, a $140 gadget that plugs into the onboard computer in most cars and records up to 75 hours of driving data. When later plugged into a home computer, it lays all the data out for parents to review.

"It feels like you always have someone in the car watching you," said Ben, 17.

Teen outgrows chip

After driving with the chip for about a year, Schauer said, Ben's driving skills and temperament matured, and they allowed him to graduate from the practice. "To me, it is such a lovely transition from your child's taking driver's education and just letting them loose," his mother said.

The device used on Ben's car did not provide data until it was downloaded later, but GPS-enabled trackers that instantly transmit information are becoming increasingly available. Some will even send text messages to parents if the car exceeds a certain speed or travels beyond a predefined area.

A growing number of companies are selling the devices over the Internet, albeit still to few parents.

The Sharper Image catalog even includes a GPS tracking device that it says "secretly tracks anything that moves--your car or your kid, or your kid in your car." The monthly airtime packages range from $20 (for updates every 60 minutes) to $50 (for updates every five minutes).

Many families that use the technology said they had not told their children that they were tracking them and didn't want them to find out, while others were uncomfortable talking publicly about the practice.

"Doing surveillance on your own child has its own stigma," said one Downstate father who has used GPS tracking on the car driven by his 17-year-old son since earlier this year.

Still, the father said the device has been helpful when trying to determine where his son had been and how fast he had been driving. The father said his son has already had two accidents, including one that totaled a car. After the second accident, he informed his son that the tracker would be installed in his car, an act that drew protest.

"But being the adult, I am liable for any activities that he does," the father said, noting some improvements in his son's driving. "As my father once explained to me, being a teenager is more like living in a totalitarian state than in a democracy."

Even without parents' installing some kind of tracking device, many newer cars already have factory-installed event data recorders. The information is not easily accessible to parents but has increasingly been used in serious crash investigations, while also triggering privacy debates.

A company called ReportMyTeen.com allows parents to receive e-mails if other drivers witness poor driving and report it to a toll-free hot line. The message is routed as an audio file, so parents can hear the actual complaint. With a 12-month contract, the service costs $47.

Electronic toll payments have also created another option for creative parents who want to track their children's movements. "Any I-PASS customer can go online and view how their I-PASS is being used," said Joelle McGinnis, an Illinois State Toll Highway Authority spokeswoman.

Others, meanwhile, are using technology to help teens improve their driving habits, especially during their most dangerous first few hundred hours on the road.

In the parking lot of a northeast Iowa high school, video highlights and other data are downloaded daily via wireless signals from cars driven by a group of 25 teens who have volunteered for a University of Iowa research program.